Hi guys,
I already received a couple of PMs about tips dun sa Listening and Reading part so I just thought of sharing here as well baka sakaling makatulong -
For listening, to augment your own training, try to listen to an audio book habang nasa biyahe. I completed listening to the Audio book of Game of Thrones, Book 3 habang nagbibiyahe papasok sa office. Its a fairly long recording. 40 hours ata yun and the language the book was written is a bit of old English. I found it difficult to really listen to it during the first hours because the words are unorthodox and unparliamentary. But eventually, it became a real pleasure to follow the story. Come exam day, I was surprised how easily understandable the recorded conversation was dahil I was so used to following a more difficult language/context sa audio book. This is about 95% of my listening practice after completing two listening Test Sets sa Cambridge 1 (just to know the format).
Also, during the listening exam, I find it truly helpful to underline keywords (names-who, dates-when,things-what, etc) in the question on the time they allowed me to read through them. Then I just waited for the answers kasi you'll hear them in chronological order naman. Pay close attention to sudden derogatory statements though, like nung samin the question asks for the <u># of covered parking slots</u> and the dialog mentioned the <u>total # of ALL parking slots</u> first, then it mentioned the <u># of covered parking slots</u> which is what you're waiting for (The devil is in the details)
For reading, I think it is important that you do a quick scan of the questions and choices first. Nevermind if they don't make much sense when you read through them. At this point you just want to have an idea of what you're getting sa reading passage. Then comes my best advice - that is for you to highlight names, dates, places, and proper nouns in the reading passage as you read them along. Scribble notes on the side of the paragraph and underline words. I'd say that the more notes you have on the paragraph given the time will allow you to retain more of the context. And if you skimmed through the questions before reading through the passage, then I believe you'll have a better idea of what to look for.
I didn't enroll at a review center and my tips above where mostly all that I really had to prepare for my listening and reading. kapa kapa lang but gumana naman hehe so hope this helps or at least adds some insights mga kapatid.. 🙂
Best of luck everyone!